First Singer Gave Up Sunbathing, Then Drugs
Brenda Bouw, National Post
May 8, 2001

TORONTO--Sitting two feet in front of Stevie Nicks, it
is difficult to tell this is the same Fleetwood Mac
siren who once lived the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll
lifestyle so severely that she has the quarter-sized
hole in the cartilage of her nose to prove it.

Not only did the 10-year cocaine habit (which she quit
in 1985) leave her permanently damaged, the addiction
to tranquilizers that followed for eight years
afterwards also nearly killed her. Then there were the
breast implants that left her poisoned with the
Epstein-Barr virus, causing lethargy, followed by a
30-pound weight gain in the mid-90s, which depressed
Nicks to the point she swore never to sing in public
again.

Combine all of that with the three decades she has
spent on the road with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo
artist, and you would expect Nicks to look a bit
bedraggled.

Instead, the singer/songwriter, who turns 53 on May
26, remains radiant, and claims she is the healthiest
she has ever been.

Nicks gives some of the credit for her slim, tiny
frame and smooth skin to her high-protein,
low-carbohydrate diet, and a vow at age 30 to stop
sunbathing.

"Even in the worst of times, I kind of think I tried
to take care of myself. I've never had a facelift,"
says Nicks in a recent interview during a press-tour
stop in Toronto to promote her latest solo album,
Trouble in Shangri-La.

Nicks, dressed in form-fitting shiny blue pants, a
long black shirt and open-toed black sandals, her
signature straight blond hair resting on her chest,
says she would consider having cosmetic surgery around
her neck, but not on her face.

"The idea of really changing my face, I don't want to
do that," she says. "I don't want to look like another
person. All of those other people who have plastic
surgery don't look the way they look."

The what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude is also
evident on Nicks's new album, which she describes as a
reflection of her own life experiences.

"The whole concept of the record, Trouble in
Shangri-La, is really about people making it to the
top of their field and messing it up really bad."

While the album is not about O.J. Simpson, it was
written during the last two months of the trial, Nicks
says.

Its release last week also fits in nicely with the
recent career dive actor Robert Downey Jr. is
experiencing after his arrest again last month for
illegal drug use.

"I think Robert Downey fits right into my Shangri-La
mode. Someone who is as respected and loved as he is
-- it is just Shangri-La and the fall of Shangri-La."

Nicks acknowledges her own storied background fits
into the same fall-from-utopia category, but she says
the album is not all autobiographical.

"Of course I went through it, but sometimes you write
more about other people than you do yourself. If you
are sad about something, maybe you don't write so much
about it. When you see someone else go through it,
well, there you go."

Trouble in Shangri-La also features such guests as
Sheryl Crow, Dixie Chick singer Natalie Maines, Macy
Gray and Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan.

While Crow made the largest contribution, co-producing
and performing on five of the songs, McLachlan sings
background vocals and plays guitar and piano on Love
Is, the final track.

McLachlan's husband, Ash Sood, also plays drums on
Love Is, which is one of the first songs Nicks wrote
when she started working on the album six years ago.

Nicks first learned of McLachlan in 1994 while hearing
her song Possession on the radio, while fast asleep
during a visit in her hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.

"It woke me up ... I sat up and said 'Who is this?' "
Nicks recalls. She bought the CD the next day.

She calls McLachlan's contribution to her new album
"one of those perfect accidents."

Canadian producer Pierre Marchand was supposed to go
to Los Angeles to record Love Is with Nicks, but had
trouble crossing the border, and instead arranged a
meeting in Vancouver. He then asked Nicks if she was
interested in having McLachlan, now on a career hiatus
and living in Vancouver, perform on the album.

Nicks agreed, and spent time with McLachlan and Sood
at their home for a week in November.

"I really got to hang out with her. It was really
neat."

Not only are McLachlan's musical talents on the album,
but her artwork as well. She drew the 'S,' used to
spell out 'Stevie Nicks' on the cover of Trouble in
Shangri-La. Turned upside down, the 'S' is meant to be
a picture of a dragon.

Nicks says she saw McLachlan's drawing on the coffee
table in the Vancouver studio and asked if she could
use it on the album.

"This record was very hand-stitched," Nicks says. "I
love that part about this record, that everybody did a
really special thing."

Also appearing on the album is Nicks's ex, Lindsey
Buckingham, with whom she recorded her first album in
1973, Buckingham-Nicks, where the couple appeared
nude. (She calls doing the nude cover "the most
terrifying moment of my entire life.") A year later,
thanks to the nude cover, which got them noticed, the
couple joined Fleetwood Mac, which became one of
rock's most storied and highly successful acts. That
band's 1977 album, Rumours, sold more than 17 million
copies, and stood as the all-time best-selling album
for several years.

Despite the band's acrimonious past, which included
Nicks's affair with Mick Fleetwood after she and
Buckingham split, Nicks says members of the band
remain friends.

She rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 1997 on tour for the
album The Dance. Since then, Buckingham has remarried
and has a child, which Nicks says has been good for
their professional relationship.

"It is all good now," says Nicks, who is single and
has no plans to have children. "He is very married,
which kind of takes out that thing of 'Will Lindsey
and Stevie get back together when they are 90?' It
makes it easier for us."

Nicks begins touring for Trouble in Shangri-La in
early July in the United States. No Canadian dates
have yet been scheduled.

Meantime, she says Fleetwood Mac will head back into
the studio again at the end of the year. The band will
record another album, but this time without singer and
keyboard player Christine McVie.

Nicks is also considering collaborating with the
all-girl group Destiny's Child, who have asked her to
play guitar in the video of their next single,
Bootylicious, which uses music from Nicks's 1982 solo
song Edge of Seventeen.